The current art involving the management of information and data contained in a personal security devices (PSD), for example, smart cards, subscriber identity modules (SIM), wireless identification modules (WIM), biometric devices, or combinations thereof, requires discrete low-level commands known in that art as application protocol data units (APDUs) to be sent to a PSD.
The PSD is a reactive device in which a returned response is generated after completion of each command executed or upon encountering an error in execution. The majority of the responses returned by the PSD are simple “processing complete” or equivalent messages. In a networked environment, awaiting the return of such responses unnecessarily ties up network bandwidth and server resources due to the latency of the transactions and relatively slow execution speeds of the PSDs.
A second limitation is due to the relatively low-level nature of the PSD operating environment, which typically requires several sequential APDU commands to be executed in order to accomplish an operation within a PSD. This could be particularly troublesome when a large number of PSDs are being managed from a central server.
Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/844,246, entitled “Method and System for Establishing a Remote Connection to a PSD,” and assigned to the assignee of the present invention, describes a communication pipe, which allows a remote server to maintain communications with one or more PSD's over a network which could be susceptible to the foregoing limitations. As such, a means to minimize the potential latency effects imposed on a network is highly desirable.